Our Glory Days
by lealila
Summary: The desert takes what it claims. Anakin is no exception. Or, in which Anakin forgets. AU. Darkish.


_**title from "someone like you" by adele.**_

_**this is written chronologically.**_

_**with the months and weeks, it speaks of **__since anakin arrived on tattoine. _

_(By the Surprise of) Our Glory Days_

_the desert takes what it claims. anakin is no exception. or, in which anakin forgets._

Anakin hates the sand. Hates the feelings and memories it carries, lodging itself literally and figuratively in his eyes and mind.

…He shouldn't be here. He's a free man, and he shouldn't _be_ here. There's nothing left on the Tattoine sands that belong to him.

Except his heritage. The Council refused to send anyone else—even if there are a few Jedi with a Mli heritage—_(anakin refuses to wonder how_ they _were discovered at the normal age, and not _him_)._ They didn't even give him Obi-Wan or Ahsoka to work with. But a revolution that happens outside of anyone's jurisdiction is hardly worth the Jedi's attention; especially during a war. But a call for help was sent and received, and the Jedi aren't extremely heartless.

The natives want their land back, and want help from the people who they—_think—_know will give it without a moment's hesitation. A long time ago, he believed that, too. His mother told him that, and sometimes, Anakin still believes that she was right. But that was when he had nothing but his mother to turn to advice for, had nothing but slavery to try and prove him wrong. Becoming a Jedi was the most glorious moment of his life. But it destroyed him in the process.

_(Here and now.)_

The co-ordinate he's told to go to is the Tusken camp that he slaughtered, those five years ago. Anakin knows this isn't a coincidence. Obi-Wan has told him time and time again that nothing happens by chance. And if Obi-Wan was here, if he knew what happened, he'd have said something about a chance at redemption, but Anakin doesn't want anything of the sort. Doesn't even want to go _near_ the camp. But he's a Jedi, so he continues walking, until he finally arrives.

Anakin senses that he is not alone—people hiding in the abundant shadows, this late in the day. But he doesn't move, doesn't do anything to threaten his presence. They want to know if he's a Jedi here to help? Fine. Let them see him as a Jedi. Not as a desert child who has returned to his home world to save his people. Let them see this man who shouldn't be here.

"Ani? Anakin Skywalker?"

One of the shadows reveals itself, and Anakin chokes down a surge of emotion, as a Jedi should. "Who else?" He tries to sound elated to see his best friend from childhood again.

Kitster Banai grins wide. "So you really did become a Jedi."

_**xxx**_

Two weeks. Anakin has learned that Melee and Seek and Amee have all joined the revolution, surviving their slave-led childhood and desperate to regain what they never had; the only thing driving them as they watch friends and family fall. They aren't of Mli heritage, but they are desert people. Besides, Melee tells him, this isn't so much a native revolution as it is a desert revolution.

"The desert takes what it claims, Ani," she tells him sadly, thoughtfully. "Slavers and Hutts may as well learn that it works the other way, too."

The revolutionists have no idea how to fight a war. Anakin tries to teach them the finer points—after all, he is a general. But they throw his words back into his face.

"You're here to negotiate peace, not fight a war. Don't try and interfere with business that isn't yours."

Anakin's furious, and refuses to even speak with the "high-ranking officials". But that's before he and his entourage of representatives are ambushed during a peace negotiation, killing three of the group before Anakin has time to lead the rest to safety, using experience and his Jedi skills. The pompous officials finally take his opinion into account. They even start calling him General Skywalker; give him people to teach how to fight a war. People start to respect him, and, for a moment, he forgets that there's another war where he was called General Skywalker, and where everyone respected him.

Of course, that's also when he _swears_ he hears someone call him Skyguy, and when he tries to find the source, he remembers that only Ahsoka has ever called him _Skyguy_. That all he heard was his imagination.

_**xxx**_

Four months. Anakin starts to forget. He forgets about the Clone Wars and his 501st and Commander Cody's battalion. He forgets the feel of Padmé's hand on his cheek, forgets stolen nights together where it's nothing but him and her. He forgets the sound of Obi-Wan's laughter. He forgets what it's like to argue with Ahsoka. He forgets talks with Chancellor Palpatine. He forgets everything, until there's nothing but the desert and foreign words in his ears. He even forgets why there's nothing but heritage and revolutions.

_**xxx**_

Eight months. Kitster comes to him, late one night when the sounds of war cries and blasters have dulled. "_Shmu tala, nalu."_ The foreign words are awkward in his mouth, but he _is_ learning.

"_Shmu tala, nalu_." Anakin greets his friend—his desert brother—as he always does, undisturbed by the late hour. He wasn't sleeping anyways. (He hardly ever sleeps now. He has forgotten what it's like to be lulled to sleep by the easy breathing of his companions—on Tattoine, he sleeps alone.)

"Anakin." He hesitates, takes a breath, looks at the ground. "There's a transmission. From Coruscant."

Dazedly, Anakin follows Kitster to the communication room deep in Mos Espa. (He has forgotten how beautiful Coruscant looks at midnight.)

"Skywalker," Anakin says. Kitster starts to leave, but Anakin tells him to stay.

"Ani? It's…it's Padmé."

And suddenly, his world lights up. "Padmé? Force Padmé—" He wants to see her—_needs_ to see Padmé, desperate to hold her in his arms. But this comm is old, and doesn't show holograms. "How—How did you—"

She sobs, and Anakin's close to sobbing too. Even this far away, he can sense—suddenly, like a kick in the gut—that something's _wrong_. "I'm sorry—Ani, I'm so sorry—"

"What happened? Padmé!"

"They're dead. The Jedi—slaughtered—"

If she says more, Anakin doesn't know: because suddenly there's nothing but screaming—incomprehensible, haunted, screaming. _Nononononononono._ They're not dead—The Jedi—His family—Obi-Wan, Ahsoka…he would've felt it—would've _felt them_—

When actually thinking about—actually searching for his bonds—bonds he hasn't touched in eight months—he realizes how _obliterated_ they are. There's not—_Nothing. _Absolutely _nothing_ resides in his mind. It's so kriffing damn _silent_. It's now that he realizes it's him who had screamed. His world is dull, and can't notice anything but the next words his wife tells him:

"I'm coming home. Anakin, I'm coming home."

_**xxx**_

She never does. Anakin doesn't know it, but Lord Sidious sends a small platoon of loyal clones to assassinate Padmé Amidala long before she arrives on Tattoine.

The morning after Padmé finally manages to comm Anakin, her speeder crashes. A freak accident. Tragic. A powerful senator who died long before her time.

Anakin doesn't know how it happened, but a week after the call, he knows she isn't coming. Not in the way he would prefer, even if he _knows_ that Padmé would never abandon him.

_**xxx**_

Anakin has forgotten what it's like to mourn. Until now.

_**xxx**_

Nine months.

Life becomes nothing except putting his heart and soul into this rebellion, putting his heart and soul into his heritage and the desert and anything besides what he has long forgotten.

(He doesn't know that Obi-Wan sometimes appears to him, to try and talk to him. He doesn't know Ahsoka can't stand to see him as what she doesn't know him as, even if she does come with Obi-Wan. He doesn't know Padmé—without real Force powers—can't enter this world, but she always watches him when she isn't busy playing with two Jedi younglings that had died centuries ago looking too much like Anakin and Padmé, but not even close to sharing their personality traits.)

Melee and Kitster are the only ones who don't give him secretive glances full of confusion, but he wishes that people would stop _looking_ at him. (He almost remembers that people stared at him during the war, too, but that was a lifetime ago…. There's no need to try and remember anything that isn't his.)

Anakin rarely talks, and when he does, he mostly speaks in Mlioik. He remembers Basic, but only because he needs to. Not everyone on Tattoine—not everyone who takes back what they never had—are of Mli descent, not everyone knows the language of the desert.

(Sometimes, even he doesn't know.)

_**xxx**_

He does not remember how much time has passed. The Hutts have lost, and now there is democracy and heritage has been restored.

What the desert wills, no man may undo.

He does not know it—(_he never will_)—but the desert is taking his soul; taking back what it has claimed years ago, the moment he landed on Tattoine, barely two days old. Even if he knew, he would not try to stop it: there's nothing left for him, anywhere.

He takes his few belongings, one day, and wanders out to the unknown. He is never seen again, but the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the New Era sometimes speak of a desert man who does not bow to anyone, not even the desert, who comes out when the deserts is at its calmest—just very briefly—and turns his face to the moons and does not say a word.

The children whisper to each other that he must have been rejected, or maybe he was looking for someone, or maybe—and this, really, is almost forbidden to say, but the children are nothing if not brave—he laughed when it rained. It never rains on Tattoine—actually, any occurrence is held in reverence and sorrow because myth says the only time it rains on Tattoine is the only time a Goddess has died. Even those who do not follow the Mli religion and their myths know that the desert is a feminine creation, at the mercy of feminine wiles; on Tattoine, to be a woman is to be sacred, no matter species or status.

To laugh at the death of one is an act of sin beyond all else.

The desert man never takes notice of their whispers and their stares: by the time he has heard or seen them, he has forgotten. He does not know that the children are wrong, that he did not laugh, nor was he rejected, nor is he looking for someone.

For generations, he has wandered the desert, trapped by his own inability to want to leave. For generations, he will continue to wander until he has accepted his loss and the desert's claim. His mind cannot let go of his soul, and neither can the desert let go his soul; a viscous battle that will never end until either lets go.

…The desert man has nothing left to hold.

_**xxx**_

One thousand two hundred and thirty-three months.

In the end, he lets go. He has finally forgotten the last thing he has ever known: remembering.

_(When he arrives in the Force, Padmé is the first one to greet him, followed by Obi-Wan, then Ahsoka, and the two Jedi children who have died centuries ago. There is laughing and crying and hugging and the desert man—and Anakin finally remembers.)_

_**a.n: wow. five months spent with this thing, and I am finally done with 1,924 words. i have put my soul into this thing, and i am pleased with the results. there is the happy ending, and the introspection, and the desert, and the revolution, and…yeah. **_

_**i really hope you have enjoyed reading this as i have enjoyed writing it. **_


End file.
